


In the Comforting Grasp of a Cold Star

by AfterGlow13



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, Post Desperate Measures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 22:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11171808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AfterGlow13/pseuds/AfterGlow13
Summary: In the immediate aftermath of Desperate Measures, Jacobi and Kepler are being held prisoner in the observation deck-cum-brig. They should be sleeping, or having a proper conversation about the hot water they’ve landed in. Being Kepler and Jacobi, they do neither. Plus, pathetic fallacy, the difference between cobalt and navy, good little prisoners, and brown eyes.





	In the Comforting Grasp of a Cold Star

**Author's Note:**

> The lovely captainlovelxce's moodboard can be found [here](http://captainlovelxce.tumblr.com/post/161729732948/wolf-359-big-bang-2017-in-the-comforting-grasp-of) Go and give her some love.

“You know that trope, where it rains when a character is sad?” Jacobi questioned. There were no clocks on the observation deck of the space station Hephaestus, but Kepler thought it was probably sometime around 03h00. Certainly not the right time for conversations on literary tropes, as much as Kepler enjoyed a good yarn. Jacobi didn’t seem to have any such thought, because he rambled on, “I think the star is taunting me, reflecting my emotional pain and turmoil. I think it’s a darker blue. I would have described it as a cobalt before, but now I think it’s more of a navy.”

“Jacobi, that’s impossible,” Kepler drawled, hoping it would shut him up.

Jacobi laughed. “Oh, that’s impossible? This star used to be red. You’re telling me it’s impossible Wolf 359 is a darker blue than it was before?”

“No, what I’m saying is impossible is for a star to care enough about your emotional state to change its colour,” Kepler replied, voice as smooth as the whiskey he used to drink before this clusterfuck of a mission took that small pleasure from him. “Now go to sleep.”

“Are we really not going to talk about this?” Jacobi said with a sigh.

“About the pathetic fallacy present in a star? No.”

“About the fact that you shot Lovelace in the head, I blew-up Hilbert, and they killed Maxwell! Or the fact that now they’ve taken complete control of the ship! Or that we’re prisoners, locked on the observation deck until they know what to do with us!”

“I know what they're going to do with us,” Kepler murmured. And he does. It involved a wait until contact, and then shit getting so freaky they'd be relevant as the only people who knew the answers. Well, he knows the answers, which would make him important, and he'll say that Jacobi is important, making him so. That should be enough that they can complete the mission. What happens after that…. Well, he never thought he was the retiring kind.

But he'd never thought this would be his last. Not until Maxwell.

“Yeah?” Jacobi said. “What's that?” He could tell him. It would be in direct opposition with his orders, but he has a hunch that those orders were going to be redundant very soon - it was hard to deny an alien when it was right in front of you.

“’Cause you know what, sir, I don't think I give a damn right now,” Jacobi snuffled. “I don't give a damn about this mission, or the crew of the Hephaestus, or what's normal in a dwarf star! I just care about Maxwell. So tell me, sir, what are we supposed to do about that?”

Make sure she remained dead. He couldn't say that, couldn't say anything to put the mission back within projected parameters, and he just wanted to get some goddamned sleep so he'd be ready for the contact event.

But Jacobi wouldn't shut up. “You can't ignore me all night, sir,” he said, voice shaking slightly. “Do you know for how many stake-outs I've listened to you ramble on about nothing? Your stories aren't even that funny.”

Kepler stood, genuinely angry, half ready to strangle his one remaining crew member. Jacobi remained where he had been sitting since the two of them had been led at gunpoint unceremoniously to the make-shift brig. A beating probably wouldn't get through to him in the state he was in, Kepler realized, hands clenched. With a sigh he let the tension go. He casually leaned against the glass separating them from the void of space, right beside Jacobi’s stare. His eyes flickered briefly from the star, unconsciously following his movements with his eyes as always, then stared fixedly up at him. “Here’s the plan: we be good little prisoners and do as we’re told, keep nice and healthy and get our sleep, so that when the time comes – and it will – we’ll be ready to take this station back.”

“That’s all you have to say? A plan? This isn’t just another mission! Maxwell’s dead.” Jacobi was angry. That was good; Kepler could manipulate that to complete the mission objectives far easier than he could overwhelming grief. He just needed to point Jacobi in the right direction and give him a push.

“Yes, she is. And we’re going to punish the people who took our crewmember from us, but in order to do that we need to be ready.”

“You’re right,” Jacobi sighed. “But we still need – I need – she was more than a crewmember. She was a friend.” Jacobi still looked angry, Kepler saw, but the grief was creeping forward again. “I’m not shutting up until you talk to me.”

“Fine,” Kepler said, amicably enough. He doesn’t know how to comfort anyone, but he’s willing to try for Jacobi. He sat, back against the glass, facing both Jacobi and the door. “Talk away.”

Jacobi sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair, and looked back at the star. “Could we have saved her?”

“Yes.” Jacobi flinched.

“Then why didn’t we?” he asked, voice breaking.

Kepler stared at him until he looked back at him. The tears in his brown eyes shone strangely in the blue light of the star. “Because I underestimated them. It won’t happen again.”

“It can’t. She’s already dead.”

Kepler rested one hand on Jacobi’s knee. That, as expected, really caught his attention. “I’m not going to lose you, too.” Jacobi’s shoulders started to shake as he tried to cry silently, curling in on himself so Kepler wouldn’t see.

Kepler watched the door, absentmindedly rubbing Jacobi’s knee. He wanted to promise Jacobi his protection, wanted to promise himself that he could protect Jacobi. For the first time since this mission began, he wanted to stop being the Colonel, and all because there wasn’t a second pair of brown eyes staring at him over Jacobi’s shoulder. This pair had been lighter, flecks of gold in them. This pair had spent too much time squinting at computer screens, and had little laugh lines around them. This pair had not deserved to die separated from her friends, alone in the cold of space. He'd failed her, another addition on his long list of sins, one which he might not have to live with long.

There was a round window in the door. Kepler stared at it, at the bit of grey wall seen through it. It did not blur, or waver.

Eventually, Jacobi’s stifled sobs subsided into the occasional sniff. They didn’t have tissues or any other such supplies, Kepler realized. This room had been used as a brig before, but all the goods that had been allocated to Hilbert during his stay had clearly been repurposed. It probably wouldn't matter with the contact event so close, but it gave Kepler a place to start, not only to make things more comfortable for him and Jacobi, but to begin to get them supplies that could be used for their escape.

Something warm brushed his hand, then covered it. Jacobi’s hand. “This isn’t going to end well, is it?”

“No,” Kepler agreed, “it’s not.” He followed his impulse to allow himself to be anything other than the Colonel, and flipped his hand so that he could grasp Jacobi’s in his own.


End file.
